all that the world calls
ambition. I don't know why it is called so, for, to me, it always seemed
to be stooping, or climbing. I'll tell you my politic and religious
sentiments in a few words. In my politics, I think no farther, than how
to preserve my peace of life, in any government under which I live; nor
in my religion, than to preserve the peace of my conscience, in any
church with which I communicate. I hope all churches, and all
governments are so far of God, as they are rightly understood, and
rightly administered; and where they are, or may be wrong, I leave it to
God alone to mend, or reform them, which, whenever he does, it must be
by greater instruments than I am. I am not a Papist, for I renounce the
temporal invasions of the papal power, and detest their arrogated
authority over Princes and States. I am a Catholic in the strictest
sense of the word. If I was born under an absolute Prince, I would be a
quiet subject; but, I thank God, I was not. I have a due sense of the
excellence of the British constitution. In a word, the things I have
always wished to see, are not a Roman Catholic, or a French Catholic, or
a Spanish Catholic, but a True Catholic; and not a King of Whigs, or
[Transcriber's note: repeated 'or' removed] a King of Tories, but a King
of England."

These are the peaceful maxims upon which we find Mr. Pope conducted his
life, and if they cannot in some respects be justified, yet it must be
owned, that his religion and his politics were well enough adapted for a
poet, which entitled him to a kind of universal patronage, and to make
every good man his friend.

Dean Swift sometimes wrote to Mr. Pope on the topic of changing his
religion, and once humorously offered him twenty pounds for that
purpose. Mr. Pope's answer to this, lord Orrery has obliged the world by
preserving in the life of Swift. It is a perfect master-piece of wit and
pleasantry.

We have already taken notice, that Mr. Pope was called upon by the
public voice to translate the Iliad, which he performed with so much
applause, and at the same time, with so much profit to himself, that he
was envied by many writers, whose vanity perhaps induced them to believe
themselves equal to so great a design. A combination of inferior wits
were employed to write The Popiad, in which his translation is
characterized, as unjust to the original, without beauty of language, or
variety of numbers. Instead of the justness of the original, they say